Azerbaijan will host the 2024 edition of the COP – 12/10/2023 – Environment

Among the ten most oil-dependent economies in the world, Azerbaijan will be the host and president of the UN Climate COP29, scheduled to take place between November 11th and 22nd, 2024.

The definition only took place this weekend, during the last days of negotiations at COP28, which takes place until Tuesday in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The official announcement of the next host should take place at the COP’s concluding plenary.

However, the document prepared by the UN secretariat with the agenda of the venues for the next editions of the COP has already been circulated this Sunday (10). It also formalizes Brazil as host of COP30, in November 2025.

Generally, host countries are confirmed two years in advance, allowing them to prepare to pay for the event and conduct the work — informally, the presidency of a COP begins as soon as the previous edition concludes.

However, the suspense over the host of COP29 extended until the middle of COP28, due to conflicts in the Eastern European region — which, according to the regional rotation promoted by the UN, would be the next region to host the event.

The difficulty was imposed by Russia’s statement that it would veto the candidacy of any European Union country as host — a response to the bloc’s sanctions imposed due to the war against Ukraine.

Azerbaijan is also experiencing a war against Armenia, but the two countries began to reach an understanding last week.

On Thursday (7), the heads of state of the two countries made a joint statement stating that there is a historic chance of achieving long-term peace. On the same day, Armenia lifted its veto on Azerbaijan’s bid to host COP29.

On Saturday (9), the Russians also committed, in informal conversations, not to veto the country’s candidacy.

Without a tradition of actively participating in climate negotiations, Azerbaijan is among the ten economies most dependent on oil, with 64% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) coming from revenues from the production and export of the commodity. The dependence is even greater than that of the COP’s current host, the United Arab Emirates, which supports 52% of its economy in the sector. The data is from Carbon Tracker analysis.

Azerbaijan is also a member of OPEC+, an expanded group of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which Brazil is also expected to join.

Just like the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which hosted last year’s edition, Azerbaijan also lives under an authoritarian regime — President Ilham Aliyev has commanded the country since 2003.

COP29 should take place in the city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. The country’s government claims that the city has good infrastructure to host the conference, which should compensate for the short deadline for its organization.

Attendance at climate conferences has increased in recent years. Editions dedicated to technical agendas — in which there is no mission to create a new milestone — used to have an audience of around 20 thousand people. Key moments in the negotiations, such as COP21, in 2015, which reached the Paris Agreement, had 45 thousand accredited.

With the worsening of the climate crisis and the greater involvement of organizations in the agenda, the COPs became inflated, even in editions of little relevance.

In a large international meeting, subnational actors, researchers, activists and businesspeople take advantage of the agenda to discuss the climate agenda in events parallel to the diplomatic negotiations.

Last year, COP27 on Climate, in Egypt, brought together 35 thousand participants. The COP28 organization accredited more than 90 thousand participants.